Nick Page

I’m just reading a dauntingly large book on the historical Jesus. Although, when I picked it up it proved to be not quite as daunting as it first appeared. Of the 868 pages in the book, only 393 are the actual narrative: the rest is the other apparatus- indices, notes, bibliography, etc.

It’s very good, so I’m not going to name it, but this struck me as quite a low percentage of actual book, even by academic standards and I started to wonder if books shouldn’t have some indications of the ingredients on the cover. Something like those corn flake packets have on the side. (Incidentally, what is Riboflavin?) For this book, it would look like this.

I think this could really catch on for other books as well. Much more informative than a blurb. You could even start listing other things.

• Ernest Hemingway – only 3% Adverbs.
• Thomas Hardy – now with 95% gloominess!
• Dan Brown – 0.01% intellectual fibre.

And you could clearly identify which books will make you intellectually fat and which books will improve your mental health.

All nominations welcomed.

I came across this blurb the other day. It’s not perhaps the most positive start to a sales pitch:

‘This book represents a radical new departure for Jürgen Moltmann, not least in the lucidity of its writing.’ In other words, for the first time you might actually understand one of his books. One gets the feeling that the blurb writer wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the new Moltmann blockbuster.

Blurb writing is one of the banes of an author’s life. When I started out, publishers had People To Write the Blurb. Nowadays they get the cleaner to do it, or failing that, the author.

The problem with that is that when the time comes to write the blurb, you’re normally only halfway  through writing the book, a point at which you generally feel that life is meaningless, all mankind is inherently evil and that the author of Ecclesiastes was, if anything, over-optimistic. (And if its a Wednesday you feel a bit worse). So if you actually wrote the blurb to reflect the way you’re feeling it would run something like:

This book was intended to be a masterpiece but has simply revealed the futility of the author’s aspirations and the massive gap between his aims and his ability. Avoid it like the plague.

Or words to that effect. But, of course, that is just the normal author’s despair. So, instead I try to focus on what’s different about the book, how I felt about it when I first came up with the idea, and what effect or outcomes I’d love the book to have. That way it not only better reflects what the end product will be, it also cheers you up a bit as well.

And the blurb matters. Book Marketing Limited  found that the blurb makes 62% of consumers buy a particular book. The blurb is an advertisement and as such should tell me what’s special about your book, what’s different and why I should buy it.

So I like blurbs. We should work hard on blurbs. Blurbs are good. I’m less fond of endorsements which tend to be written by a mate and which suffer from blurb-inflation.  The Guardian has a story about ridiculous over-the-top praise for David Grossman’s To the End of the Land. One reviewer wrote

Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same. Walls have been pulled down, barriers broken, a dimension of feeling, of existence itself, has opened in you that was not there before. To the End of the Land is a book of this magnitude.

No, it isn’t. I mean, I haven’t even read the book, but there’s no way it can live up to this billing. I’ve noticed this in Christian publishing as well, particularly among folk who you might think would take a more sober view. Richard Foster wrote of Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy:

Like Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, [this book] is a masterpiece and a wonder.

No, it isn’t. It’s quite good, but hardly in the ‘great achievements in art’ class. Still in Foster territory, on the back of the Renovare Study Bible I noticed this quote from John Ortberg:

The names of Foster, Willard, Brueggemann and Peterson may not last quite as long as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but they are our modern day heroes of mind and spirit, and they have developed the most spiritually impactful Bible of our time.

No, they haven’t. And nor does it do them any favours to compare them to the writers of the gospel. It just makes everyone involved sound a bit silly.

In America endorsements seem to matter a lot more and books are covered in so many it’s like a book jacket version of Tourette’s. I never pay any attention to endorsements myself, but publishers seem to like them so I suppose they might work. Indeed, it is a perpetual source of woe to my publishers that they can’t find anyone to endorse my books although I do point out that this is largely because no-one has ever heard of me.

Still, at least it stops anyone comparing me to Michelangelo.

But I do.

According to the blurb on the blog, the jorunal was ‘a sophisticated international review, on the Dada-Surrealist axis, but with a strong Constructivist component as well.’ So now you know.

I’m always intrigued by ingenuity in fitting a lot of living into a small space. Claire and I started out our married life in a bedsit, our living room was our bedroom. I wish we’d had this kind of furniture.
I love the desk that converts into a bed. It would enable me to combine two of my passions: writing and sleeping.

Mind you, the bloke who has decided to live in this nomadic micro-house might find all of it way too big.

Alec Farmer, who is researching ‘a movement from the 1960′s and 70′s known as the ‘Urban Nomad’ movement’ has decided to live in this pod for a year. In Glasgow.

It’s based on the work of a designer called Ken Isaacs, whose designs were ‘smaller than architecture but bigger than furniture’. I quite fancy one of these in the garden…

There’s something about a man and his shed. (I was thinking of writing an English version of the Shack, only calling it ‘The Shed’.)

Anyway, there are sheds and then there are SHEDS. And here, people, is the Cuprinol Shed of the Year 2010, a pirate-themed extravaganza from – where else? – Essex.

And, yes, that is a bar attached. Genius.

Great story from the G20 summit today, when the Toronto Police put on a display of the dangerous weapons they had confiscated from protestors.

The display was designed to respond to criticism of their heavy-handling of protestors and included a machete and baseball bat to bear spray and crowbars. the police chief particularly drew attention to some chain mail and arrows, which he claimed had been ‘modified  to be dipped in a flammable liquid and set ablaze.’

Sadly the arrows belonged to Brian Barrett, who was heading to a role-playing fantasy game when he was stopped. They also confiscated – and displayed – his metal body armour, foam shields and several fake clubs made of plastic tubing covered with foam. And as for the modified, fire-bearing arrows? He had cut the pointy ends off and replaced them with old socks to make them safe.

Now I’m not saying that Role Playing gamers shouldn’t be arrested, but not under that legislation. Offending public decency should do it. Or ‘Needing to get out more’. Although, to be fair to Mr Barret, that was the problem. If he hadn’t gone out he’d have been fine.

As if that wasn’t enough, the police also included two weapons – a crossbow and chainsaw – which they admitted had nothing to do with the summit protests and came from a different incident entirely.The ‘dangerous weapons’ also included bandanas, cycle helmets and tennis balls.Now I’m not an expert on this sort of thing, but how do you hurt someone with a bandana and a tennis ball? I know André Agassi wasn’t fashionable, but he wasn’t dangerous.

There were also some real stuff to be fair, including gas masks, cans of spray paint, a replica gun, saws, pocket knives, chains and handcuffs. Or maybe they were just part of a Zombies v Aliens role playing game.

Complete story here

Just got an advance copy of the new One Stop Bible Atlas that I created for Lion. Here’s the blurb:

An entirely new kind of Bible atlas, including:

• A wide range of contemporary mapping styles
• the latest archaeological and historical research
• lively text packed with useful information
• over 170 full-colour maps, photos and illustrations

All of which means it looks great. I’m really pleased with the approach and the detail: instead of lumping the journeys of Paul into the traditional three missionary journeys, we split them up into ten maps or inset maps, with distances and even chronological details as recorded in Acts. There’s a map of Roman palestine with distances between the towns, like a modern road map. There are 3-D perspective maps of battles, illustrations of the temple and Jerusalem and a lovely isometrc drawing of the development of Temple mount.

Some sample spreads below.

Now all we need is an iPad app!

Watching the world cup with all its usual English hysteria.

The Germans look annoyingly good, however they do have a player called Schweinsteiger and, childish though it is, every time I hear that word I think of this scene from Young Frankenstein.

He’s a good player. It goes without saying.

Hamstergate. Part 3000007.

As some of you may know, a couple of weeks ago the hamster went missing (again). She’d previously escaped for nine weeks before being recaptured.

Anyway, As if a missing hamster wasn’t enough, two days ago we came down to find that the hose to the dishwasher had been chewed through and there were mouse droppings. Kitchen mildly flooded. So we set the trap and replaced the hose.

Came down yesterday to find the hose chewed through, more water everywhere and a rather moist mouse in a trap. Replaced the hose again (wrapped in a layer of lino for more protection) and got rid of the mouse.

Came down this morning to find the hose (and lino) really thoroughly chewed through and water flooding everywhere.

It was only while we were mopping up that we looked down and saw a face appear in the cupboard. A hamster face. A soggy hamster face.

Clearly the hamster had been chewing the water hose all along. And then framing the mouse.

This is one seriously criminal hamster.

Anyway, she’s back behind bars.

For now…

The author of the Wallander series, was on board the convoy heading to Gaza. This is his record of events.

And something of an alternative account here.